Get started as a Neighborhood Ambassador or Prospective Homebuyer now!
An app connecting prospective home-buyers with neighborhood ambassadors, built on React.js & the MERN stack.
Ambassador's purpose is to aid the home-buying process by connecting prospective buyers with ambassadors from the neighborhood they're interested in. By connecting with ambassadors, they can gain insights into what it's actually like to live in the neighborhood: whether it's learning more about the local school, or just getting the scoop on which internet service provider is best in the area.
A new user can sign up as either a prospective homebuyer or a neighborhood ambassador.
Neighborhood ambassadors are asked to provide their physical address and contact information, which is needed for prospective homebuyers to find ambassadors in their desired area and to reach out to them to connect. Prospective homebuyers are asked to provide their desired home location, whether it's a specific address or just a city & state.
Once signed up & logged in, each user type sees their respective dashboard:
The neighborhood ambassador dashboard displays a map centered on the ambassador's home location, and also shows other nearby ambassadors. The prospective homebuyer dashboard displayed a map centered on their desired location, along with neighborhood ambassadors in that area.
From a technical perspective, Ambassador is a decoupled React / MERN-stack web application. It uses React + HTML/CSS/Bootstrap on the front-end, Node & Express on the back-end, and MongoDB for its database.
Data Model
Ambassador's data model includes a User schema only:
- User: Object
- firstName: String (e.g., 'Johnny')
- lastName: String (e.g., 'Appleseed')
- email: String (e.g., 'johnny@appleseed.com')
- password: String
- phoneNumber: String
- targetAddress: String
- locationCoordinates: [ Number ] (contains comma-separated longitude & latitude)
- role: [ String ] (contains 'Prospective Homebuyer' and/or 'Neighborhood Ambassador')
Third Party APIs
Ambassador integrates with third party APIs for the following purposes:
- Mapbox: To display an interactive map with markers & popovers
- Google Maps: To obtain longitudinal / latitudinal coordinates associated with a physical address
Routes - Frontend
| Path | Component | Description |
|---|---|---|
| / | Home | Display landing page if user is not logged in, otherwise display interactive map (MapWidget component) at user's custom location |
| /login | Login | Render login screen & handle login functionality |
| /profile | Profile | Render user profile screen, or if user is not logged in, prompt to sign up or login |
| /ambassador-registration | AmbassadorRegistration | Render homebuyer signup screen & handle registration functionality |
| /homebuyer-registration | HomebuyerRegistration | Render ambassador signup screen & handle registration functionality |
Routes - Backend
| URL | Method | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| /auth/login | POST | Handle user login functionality and return JSON web token (JWT) |
| /auth/signup | POST | Create user in database, then log them in |
| /auth/me/from/token | POST | Receive user's token and return user details |
| /user | GET | Get all users from database |
| /user/:id | GET | Get specific user by ID from database |
| /user/:id | PUT | Update prospective homebuyer user's target city, state, & location coordinates in the database |
| /ambassadors | GET | Get all users from database whose role is 'Neighborhood Ambassador' |
- HTML5, CSS
- React.js
- MongoDB
- Token-based user authentication using bcrypt
- Front-end npm modules: axios, dotenv, react, react-dom, react-mapbox-gl, react-router-dom, react-scripts
- Back-end npm modules: bcrypt, body-parser, cors, dotenv, express, express-jwt, jsonwebtoken, mongoose, morgan, nodemon, path, react-router-dom
- Bootstrap 4
- FontAwesome
- Roboto Google Font
- Github
- Heroku
- Trello
I would implement the following additional features:
- Messaging between homebuyers and ambassadors.
- Add overview of ambassador rewards program, and ability to track behavior.
- Handle case where a user could be both an ambassador and a homebuyer.